SoundEffect - A container class for sound resources which can be loaded from .wav files similar to XNA's SoundEffect.

SoundEffectInstance - Provides a single playing, paused, or stopped instance of a sound similar to XNA's SoundEffectInstance.

DynamicSoundEffectInstance - SoundEffectInstance where the application provides the audio data on demand similar to XNA's DynamicSoundEffectInstance.

WaveBank - A container class for sound resources packaged into an XACT-style .xwb wave bank, similar to XNA's WaveBank but with support for directly playing one-shots and creating SoundEffectInstances that refer to entries in the wave bank.

DirectXTK for Audio uses XAudio 2.8 for Windows Store apps for Windows 8.1, Windows Store apps for Windows 8.0, Windows phone 8, and Xbox One*. The VS projects for these platforms all include the graphics and audio components.

When building Win32 desktop applications, you can either make use of XAudio 2.8 if targeting Windows 8.0 or later, or you can make use of XAudio 2.7 with the legacy DirectX SDK (June 2010) to target Windows Vista, Windows 7, or later. There is one VS project for the graphics component, another for the Windows 8.x version of the audio components, and another for the down-level version that requires the legacy DirectX SDK to build.

The DirectXTK package also includes a new command-line tool, XWBTool, which can be used to build XACT-style wave banks for more efficient management of audio data. DirectXTK for Audio does not make use of the legacy XACT Engine, XACT Cue, or XACT SoundBank. It only uses .xwb wave banks as a method for packing .wav data. The WaveBank class can use .xwb wave banks built with XWBTool or the legacy XACTBLD tool.

More detailed documentation, full release notes, and other information can be found on the DirectXTK CodePlex site.